Encyclopedia of Microtonal Music Theory

scale

A succession of musical pitches arranged in order of pitch-height, generally considered as a source set of pitches for musical composition.

Different types or families of scales are usually characterized by repeating patterns of intervals between the pitches.

As examples, the typical major and minor scales are diatonic, which means that they have characteristic interval patterns of "whole-tones" and semitones, usually called "whole-steps" and "half-steps" respectively. Pentatonic scales have characteristic interval patterns of "whole-steps" and "minor 3rds", etc. Note that in this latter example the so-called "minor-3rd" is still regarded as a step.

Scales are usually, but not necessarily, designated only for one octave and considered to be octave-invariant.